Technical Field
Aspects of the present disclosure relate to an image forming apparatus.
Related Art
In an electrophotography image forming apparatus, an electrostatic latent image is formed on the surface of an image bearer including a photoconductive layer, the electrostatic latent image is then developed with a charged developer and the image is transferred to a recording medium at a transfer position. In this configuration, a cleaning member is provided to clean off adhering substances, such as untransferred toner and paper dust, adhering to the image bearer. A strong electrostatic adhesion force between adhering substances and the image bearer however may result in insufficient cleaning. To solve this problem, a technique of emitting light from a light irradiator before cleaning onto the image bearer including the photoconductive layer to reduce the surface potential of the image bearer and thereby reducing the adhesion force between the image bearer and the adhering substances is proposed.